


I'll Be Waiting if You Fall

by bffimagine



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 02:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19075678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bffimagine/pseuds/bffimagine
Summary: Five times James saved Keith's life and that one time James finally decided he'd like to kiss him.





	I'll Be Waiting if You Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Save You” by Simple Plan
> 
> TW: suicidal thoughts in one part, child abuse

They first met in the last few months of elementary school--just one of many that Keith Kogane shuffled into during the blur of unfamiliar faces and places after his father’s death. He was the scrappy scrawny kid that stared out the window instead of paying attention in class; the new kid, the outcast from the time he set foot in the classroom.

To Keith, it was just another place he was simply passing through.

To James, he was a mystery, an enigma, and eventually, a pain in the ass.

Keith’s foster family at the time had only met him the night before. The social worker dropped him off with a clipped warning of, “Best behaviour this time, yes?” that Keith had sullenly refused to respond to as he shouldered his duffle and shut the car trunk. The family that greeted him seemed pleasant enough--a middle-aged couple with one older child of their own that had just started at boarding school that year for ninth grade.

The first night was quiet, and Keith dreamed about fire. He dreamed about his father’s voice, the lilt of his laugh, the quirk of his lips when he smiled, and he dreamed of the smell of burning hair and singed flesh. He dreamed of his father’s last words to him: “See you in the morning, Keith! Love you, bud.”

He woke in a cold sweat with a scream trapped halfway out of his throat, choking him as he tried to breathe through the tremors wracking his frame. He clamped his hands tight over his mouth, desperate not to make a sound.

He didn’t go back to sleep that night.

The first day of school was thus an uninteresting haze of fatigue. There was a boy who introduced himself brightly, but Keith didn’t have the energy to do much more than spare him a glance before his gaze was drawn back out to the window, out to the open space that beckoned him like a siren song.

 _Freedom_ , sang the sunlight as it filtered through the clouds.

Keith watched the shafts of light dance across the whispers of wind through the grass until the final bell rang for the day.

The second night, unfortunately, was not quiet.

Keith got off the school bus and was greeted by the sound of shouting as soon as he opened the front door. He felt his hands go cold and numb, but he bit his lip and toed off his shoes as quietly as possible.

He hoped to just go up to his room, shut himself in, and do his homework while he ignored whatever was happening in the kitchen.

The stairs ensured this was not the case, groaning loudly and announcing his presence to the other occupants of the house.

As if a spell had been cast, the house went silent. Keith felt his heartbeat in his temples; he held his breath.

“Keith?” the woman called out sweetly. Keith clenched his hands into fists so tight he could feel his blunt fingernails breaking skin.

“Yes, ma’am?” he called back, tentatively walking toward the source of the voice.

As soon as he could see through the entryway to the kitchen, he froze.

There was shattered glass on the tiles, a puddle of dark liquid in the midst of it. Keith wrinkled his nose against the sharp smell of alcohol in the air. The woman was behind the counter, both hands braced on it like she had been about to launch herself over it. The man was sitting slumped in one of the chairs at the table, fingers still forming a noose around the neck of a beer bottle.

“Keith, sweetie,” the woman said in short, measured tones, “would you please help me clean this up?”

Keith swallowed thickly. He nodded. He didn’t want to be sent back to social services; he had been through so many homes, some much worse than others. This couple seemed decent, they even provided him his own room, and he’d been fed the night before. He didn’t want to mess this up.

Without a word, Keith tucked his backpack against the wall and sank to his hands and knees to start plucking the pieces of glass off the floor. A tense silence fell over the room, broken only by the ‘ _tink tink_ ’ of the glass shards hitting one another in Keith’s other hand.

The woman took a deep breath. Keith kept his head down, methodically collecting the glass in one hand and carefully avoiding the pool of beer in the middle of it all. He wished he had something to throw the glass into, but didn’t dare ask.

Keith listened to the quick footfalls of the woman leaving the kitchen. He felt the burn of the man’s gaze on the back of his neck as he continued to pick up the pieces, hands starting to shake. He accidentally dropped a few of the pieces back onto the floor because there were just too many to hold in his open palm, and that’s when he heard the chair legs scraping on the tile. He could feel the vibration through his knees and he stiffened.

The man stood, towering over him with an unreadable expression on his face.

If there was anything that Keith had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t the man’s boot coming down hard on the back of his neck, forcing his face down into the floor. In his surprise, he instinctively threw his hands out in an attempt to catch himself before his head made impact, but this only caused the pile of glass in his left hand to slice haphazardly through his palm.

He had just enough presence of mind to be grateful that there hadn’t been any glass where his face became intimately acquainted with the tile.

“You finish cleaning that shit up,” the man said coldly, the pressure at the back of Keith’s neck growing infinitesimally heavier, “and if I hear a single peep outta you, you’re gonna regret it.”

Keith struggled to breathe under the weight crushing his face and throat into the floor. Seemingly satisfied, the man removed his foot and stormed away.

By the time morning rolled around, Keith had managed to sweep up every last sliver of glass. The beer had been easy enough to mop up with paper towels.

The blood had been a lot harder to clean.

Perhaps it was remorse, or maybe it was pity, but as Keith tried to keep his hands from shaking as he prepared for school, he noticed that one of his foster parents had left a pair of fingerless gloves on his pillow.

(There was no way he could have slept that night; he bit his lips bloody trying to avoid making a sound while he picked all the pieces of glass out of his hand, terrified that if he made a sound, the man would find him in the bathroom.)

So that was how he showed up at school the next day with a bruised cheekbone and bandages on his hand hidden by his gloves. His teacher was immediately alarmed, but Keith told her he had gotten into a fight, knowing his record had so many accounts of “anger” and “aggression’ that she wouldn’t question it.

She didn’t.

Hence, Keith was completely caught off-guard when someone else did.

“What the hell happened to your face?”

Keith startled so badly his hands started to shake. He pressed them between his thighs to hide the trembling, and fought back a wince as it put pressure on his wounds.

“None of your damn business,” he barked at this nosey kid. Grey-brown eyes widened before narrowing.

“No need to be an asshole about it,” the other boy snipped. Keith vaguely recalled meeting this kid the previous day; James Griffin, the boy who had introduced himself brightly with a welcoming outstretched hand that Keith had merely glanced at before turning away. There was no reason to get attached to anyone here; the school year was almost over, and Keith was honestly more occupied with figuring out how he’d survive the summer, given the previous night’s encounter with his foster father. His heart rate skyrocketed at just the memory.

James Griffin was everything that Keith was not--a stickler for the rules who had a boner for bowing to authority, who was everyone’s favourite model student, and who had always been taught that if there was something he wanted, he could achieve it.

Keith hated him on principle.

Of course, that day they were paired together for a major project. James was, of course, too much of a brown-noser to voice his displeasure, and Keith… well, Keith didn’t really have any say in the matter, so he just bore his burden silently and sourly.

Anger was a safe emotion for Keith; fear was much more dangerous. He learned very quickly that the people who cared weren’t going to stay, and many of them only seemed to care because there was something they could get in return. Everyone else was just as likely to ignore his entire existence or actively try to snuff it out.

Keith was wary of everyone. That earned him the constant disciplinary lectures for acting out, even though most of the time, he was reacting from pure self-preservation instinct inscribed in his bones. Whenever someone encroached on his space, the first thing he wanted to do was _get them out_. If he labelled that as fear, he would’ve fallen apart years ago. Hence, anger was much safer, much more comfortable. Sure, it read in his (very thick) case file as “problem child”, but for Keith, it kept him alive, and he could find no fault with that.

So Keith avoided actually interacting with James Griffin as much as he could. To the other boy’s surprise, Keith was a bright student. He actually had the potential to be top of the class, which would make James feel threatened if it was anyone other than the weird loner kid that spent more time daydreaming while he looked out the window than he did paying attention in lessons. Still, Keith was a whirlwind that suddenly appeared in their classroom one day out of the blue, never listened to a single word their teacher said, and still managed to pull off near-perfect scores on tests and assignments. James, of course, was still getting the best scores, but he also couldn’t let this joint project with the weird new kid tarnish his perfect record.

“We are gonna have to actually work together, you know,” he said bitterly, refusing to meet the other boy’s unnatural violet eyes.

Those violet eyes narrowed in annoyance. “We _are_ working together--I’m doing my part and you’re doing yours.”

James huffed as he rifled through Keith’s notes for their project; they were impeccable, but they also hadn’t been done _his_ way and therefore _they weren’t good enough_.

“Well, we’re going to have to do a presentation for this, and that means we have to practice.”

Keith had the audacity to roll his eyes, and James felt his blood boil. He grit his teeth against the profanities he wanted to yell at the other boy’s stupid face, but he knew that would be unbecoming of him.

“You’re coming over to my house tomorrow night. No excuses. We have to get this done.”

When he said it, Keith had wanted to throttle him. Instead, he crossed his arms and dug his fingertips into his triceps hard enough to bruise.

“Fine.”

That night, Keith walked in on another fight between his foster parents. Again, his foster mother left the room.

That night, Keith’s foster father threw him into the wall. Keith barely managed to catch himself at the last second to avoid braining himself on the corner, but caught his weight at an awkward angle and narrowly avoided breaking his wrist.

He just tightened the strap of his glove the next morning. If he had a hard time writing during the day, he bit his tongue and forced himself through it.

He went to James’ house after school, as the other boy had demanded, so they could work on their presentation. The process went surprisingly smoothly.

Keith’s foster father was supposed to pick Keith up from school that day. He drove toward the school, forgetting that Keith had sent them a message to let them know he was working on a project with a classmate.

Keith’s social worker picked him up from James’ house that evening. She told Keith that his foster father had been in an accident, so Keith was going back with her to spend the night in the orphanage until social services could find him another placement.

Years later, Keith found out that his foster father had a blood alcohol level more than five times the legal limit, and had driven into a tree.

A part of him was mournful, and a smaller, uglier, darker part of him was relieved.

Another part of him, oddly, was grateful that James Griffin had inadvertently saved his life by forcing him to go to his house for their project after school.

\-----

Keith and James reunited at the Garrison, somehow on even worse terms than they had been before they parted ways in elementary school (Keith wasn’t sure how much of that was due to the incomplete project that James had to finish on his own since Keith was so abruptly withdrawn from their school). They were constantly at each other’s throats, and things had escalated to a physical altercation between them.

( _“Oh yeah? Is that what Mommy and Daddy told you before--”_ )

But Keith finally had a guiding light to help pull him out of the darkness he’d been fumbling through since his father died--Takashi Shirogane. The man was like an anchor to Keith’s storm-tossed ship, a compass pointing him home. Against all odds, against every screaming instinct ingrained in Keith that everything good would leave him and everything else was a threat, Takashi Shirogane reminded him how to love.

The problem, perhaps, was that Keith loved too deeply, too intensely. He loved like a drowning man sought to breathe; fiercely, and with everything he had.

So it stood to reason that when Shiro left for the Kerberos mission, Keith was lost.

And when Shiro was announced dead, Keith _shattered_.

After spending so many years afraid to let anyone in, afraid of what it meant to care about anyone ever again, Keith’s heart was too brittle to withstand another breaking.

The only thing he had left in the world was an empty ambition to reach the stars with no one left to meet him there, and a knife he had had all his life and no explanation other than, “It used to be your mother’s.”

This was what led him to the night after the announcement of the failure of the Kerberos mission, the loss of the Garrison’s greatest pilot and the loss of everything that had made Keith feel alive again. He had taken Shiro’s hoverbike out to the cliff they used to frequent, where he could see the desert stretch for miles before it touched the edge of the sky. He sat with his knife in a white-knuckled grip, certain that without Shiro, there was nothing left to live for.

Possibly the last person he ever expected to show up at that moment was James Griffin, who never dared to have his uniform any less than fully regulation-pressed and would never break curfew.

Showing up in the middle of nowhere hours past lights-out was James Griffin, breaking every rule Keith had never even tried to follow.

“What are you doing out here, Griffin?” he said coldly, wondering if it came across as stoic as he was aiming for, or if it just betrayed how horrifically hopeless and lonely he felt.

He heard Griffin shift his weight from foot to foot, obviously uncomfortable. Keith couldn’t even really imagine why Griffin was there, and he felt a flare of annoyance under his skin that the other boy was essentially interrupting his attempt to make peace with his decision to bleed out under the stars Shiro had loved enough to die for.

“Just… thought…” Griffin cleared his throat awkwardly, then started again. “I just thought that you should probably eat something.”

Keith looked at him quizzically. As if to prove that this was indeed his intention behind following Keith so far away from Garrison grounds, Griffin pulled out a granola bar he had obviously obtained from the commissary and held it out to Keith.

Keith accepted it numbly, absently realizing that he had to drop his knife into his lap to take the snack from Griffin. If Griffin noticed, he didn’t comment.

“For what it’s worth,” Griffin started after a long, uncomfortable silence, “I’m really sorry. About what happened.”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, and at that moment, Keith thought he looked small. Sheepish, even.

“I uh… I know Shirogane meant a lot to you.”

Keith felt his eyes burn, but refused to let Griffin see him cry. He sucked a harsh breath through his teeth, but said nothing.

“And… um, I think it was kinda messed up. How they didn’t… How they didn’t tell you about the crash and stuff beforehand. You shouldn’t have had to… well, you know.”

“I’m just like any other cadet,” Keith muttered quietly, voice barely carrying on the sand-drenched breeze. “They had no reason to give me any special treatment.”

Keith probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was when Griffin snorted derisively.

“That’s bullshit and you know it, Kogane.” The other boy’s eyes softened a fraction. “Anyone who wasn’t fucking _blind_ could see how much you meant to him, too.”

That certainly gave Keith pause; he felt his throat close up and spasm around a sob, his breath hitching audibly. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, hoping the pressure would keep the tears at bay.

Griffin shifted his weight uncomfortably again, and Keith wished he would just leave him alone already. As if sensing this, Griffin finally said, “I’m gonna go now, but… you don’t have to do this alone, okay?”

Keith thought it was extremely odd that a guy who obviously had no reason to care about him (not after their disastrous partner work and general antagonism in elementary school and definitely not after their ongoing altercations at the Garrison) would be the only other person to show him kindness since Shiro managed to drag him out of his personal hell that was abusive foster families and social service workers who didn’t want to bother with a kid they expected to eventually get himself arrested, or killed, or both.

Hours after Griffin had left and the chill of the night had settled beneath Keith’s skin, he stared at the granola bar in one hand while the other gripped the hilt of his knife. He still contemplated just ending it all and taking the easy way out, but Shiro _had_ taught him that _patience yields focus_ , and it would be such a waste to not eat the granola bar. Griffin had to have gone through the effort of buying it from the commissary and bringing it all the way out there, so the least Keith could do would be to actually eat it.

If for no other reason than trying to avoid disgracing the unexpected token of kindness, Keith went back to the Garrison and snuck back into his dorm just before all the cadets were expected to wake up and start the day.

\-----

Years later, the paladins returned to Earth. They didn’t expect the Galra’s destruction to have reached this far, and it was a rude wake-up call to how woefully unprepared they were.

Fortunately, another thing they didn’t expect was to have some allies that arrived just in time to save their skins.

“The drones send distress signals when they’re attacked,” one of the obviously human soldiers said testily, and Keith felt his hackles rising at the confrontational tone. He forced himself to swallow the reflexive desire to shut this person out and instead listened attentively.

“Our weapons neutralize those signals. So, unless you want to deal with a swarm of those things, let us handle it. Now let’s get out of here before more show up.”

Well, the guy didn’t have to be such a jerk about it, but Keith was grateful for the help. If the team of human resistance fighters hadn’t shown up, he didn’t know how things would have turned out. He wasn’t willing to think about the what if’s, since so many of them probably ended with his team getting injured, killed, or captured.

When they arrived back at the Galaxy Garrison, one of the last places Keith ever thought he’d return to, that’s when the odd sense of familiarity became clear. Keith looked back at the soldier, leaning against one of the Garrison vehicles, and the guy took of his helmet.

An odd coil of heat pooled in Keith’s stomach. While the years hadn’t been kind to their home planet, they certainly had been kind to this grown-up version of James fucking Griffin.

Keith stared for a beat too long, and turned away hoping that the wildfire in his face didn’t look as obvious as it felt.

\-----

Knowledge or death. Victory or death.

Perhaps it was the Galra in him, but Keith felt like there were a lot of things he was willing to die for.

The mission. Peace, in the long run. The safety of the universe. His home planet. His teammates turned friends turned family, and whatever it’d take to make them happy.

(For a brief second, his mind flashed back to adrenaline making his hands shake on the controls of a small rebel ship while he stared down the forcefield over the Galra warship. He remembered the flash of, ‘Anything to save them’ as he accelerated forward at full throttle, only to pull up at the last second when the shield abruptly dropped.

He remembered the pounding of his pulse drowning out Matt’s screaming in his headset, only for Shiro’s voice to eventually filter through.

‘ _Good work, Keith._ ’)

So when Keith saw Lance and Pidge reunited with their families, his first thoughts were, “What about Hunk and Shiro?”, quickly followed by a pang of regret that he could never reunite Allura and Coran with their families in the same way.

Other than Krolia, who was in no way tied to this planet anyhow, Keith had no one else.

(There was a nagging thought that _someone_ other than Shiro had history with him, but Keith didn’t dwell on it long enough to examine who that might be.)

Adam had never really understood his bond with Shiro, nor Shiro’s determination to save him from himself. But Adam never had any qualms about Shiro spending more of his free time with a troubled cadet than his own boyfriend, and there were times that Adam even went out of his way to fill some of the gaps in time when Shiro was called away for officer business so Keith wouldn’t be quite as lonesome.

Keith respected him. When Kerberos was lost, he mourned Shiro’s loss alongside him. Now, Keith mourned his loss alongside Shiro.

That was one of the reasons Keith was hellbent on saving Hunk’s family, no matter what it took.

Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. The mice didn’t even have anything to do with the plan this time around.

“You two heading somewhere?”

Fuck. Keith physically bit his tongue before he responded, trying to keep his voice as even as possible.

“This doesn’t concern either of you,” he grit out as level as possible.

“No, but you’ll probably be concerned with the patrol drones that will spot you within seconds.” The smug tone Veronica used reminded Keith so much of Lance that despite the anxiety and frustration tightening in his shoulders, he felt strangely comforted.

“And you might be concerned with the blast from Sendak’s automated low-orbit, long-range blaster satellite that takes you out.”

Griffin’s smug tone, however, just made Keith wonder how he ever thought his childhood bully-slash-rival had grown up.

“What’s your problem?” Hunk asked defensively.

“My problem is I don’t wanna see our only hope for saving Earth get hurt.” Keith felt the beginnings of a retort building behind his teeth, but then Griffin continued, surprisingly gentle, “That’s why we’re coming with you.”

There was some feeling that Keith couldn’t name fluttering behind his sternum. He shook it off.

The mission was simple, and his objective was clear. _Feelings_ would only get in the way.

Victory or death; seemed like the probability of victory had just increased by one incredibly frustrating asshole from Keith’s past, and one of his best friend’s snarky-as-fuck older sister.

\-----

No one had the gall to hope that Earth’s final stand against Haggar’s onslaught would be easy. The robeasts never went down easy.

Yet maybe they had allowed themselves to hope that there wouldn’t be any casualties.

That was perhaps their biggest mistake, James thought as he watched the streaks of light plummeting toward the Earth like comets, devastating in their beauty and also what they meant.

The battle was over, but at what cost?

( _"Victory or death,”_ he remembered one of the defeated Galra soldiers proclaiming before killing himself in front of them.)

James felt his entire body go cold.

The Galra were much too optimistic. “Victory or death” implied that if there was victory, there was no death.

James never seemed to be able to catch a break like that.

“Fuck, Kogane,” he found himself muttering under his breath between barking orders at his team. They had to retrieve them.

He pushed aside the weird… feelings… that had begun to stir as soon as he saw the red paladin remove his helmet to reveal the moody outcast that he had _maybe_ been a little less than kind to while they were growing up. The kid that pulled a disappearing act whenever times got tough, whether it was a group project he was reluctant to participate in (which, of course, James still ended up getting a ninety-eight percent score on, because he could do the work for two people and still do it better than Keith Kogane after the other boy suddenly vanished. And they had _just_ completed their whole presentation...) or predictably burning out after shining so infuriatingly brightly in the simulator at the Garrison.

Well, suffice to say that kid was no longer a _kid_ so much as a battle-hardened warrior. This Keith moved with deadly beautiful grace; he was thoughtfully quiet where _his_ Keith had been sullen and withdrawn; he was intelligent and tactical where _his_ Keith had still been intelligent, but much more reckless and obnoxious about it.

(Well, James thought back on how the red--no wait, black--and yellow paladins attempted to sneak out on an extremely ill-advised and definitely not approved mission to one of the Galra prison camps, and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the thought of Keith being anything _but_ reckless. Clearly age and wisdom did not grant Keith the ability to completely grow out of his tendency to follow instinct and passion over logic.)

And as the lions’ impact with the Earth sent bone-rattling shockwaves through everything in the atmosphere, James felt his pulse ratchet higher as he pushed his MFE faster.

Look where Kogane’s passion and stupid fucking martyrdom got him this time.

“Fuck, Kogane,” he grumbled again as he shot forward in his seat upon coming to a screeching halt beside the massive crater cradling the black lion. It looked like a terrifying heap of scrap metal, and James felt icy dread gathering in the pit of his gut. If this millenia-old semi-sentient alien warship looked this worse for wear, how could he hope that its _pilot_ would be--

Shaking his head, James clambered out of his aircraft as fast as he could, landing with a quiet _thump_ beside the lion. He wasted no time in circling it, trying to find a way in; the lion was on its side, the lower half of its body mostly buried in the ground. It was as if the lion did everything in its power to protect its head, where its precious pilot sat.

James had to pry the lion’s mouth open with a grunt. He felt like the lion was still somehow trying to protect its paladin, despite the eerie darkness where there used to be light in its eyes. He shuddered and tried not to think about it too much.

“Yellow lion found, yellow paladin retrieved,” Ina’s voice crackled over the comm unit. James felt the tension in his shoulders release incrementally.

“Status?” he said hoarsely, trying not to broadcast the strain of literally forcing his way into the defunct black lion.

“Injured and unconscious. Full extent of injuries unclear, but vital signs all stable for now.”

“Good,” James replied. “Kinkade? Rizavi?”

“Red and green lions really closeby,” Ryan’s voice came, much steadier and clearer than James’ head (and heart, maybe) felt at the moment. “Lance and Pidge are both really out of it but conscious. McClain’s leg is a mess though.”

There was some rustling and something that sounded an awful lot like a bloodcurdling scream, then a thick silence.

“Kinkade, what the hell did you do to my baby brother?!”

“Cool it, Veronica,” Nadia said, sounding a little breathless. “The extrication process was… uh… a bit delicate. We might have… jostled things a little.”

James could hear Veronica’s sharp intake of breath as he _finally_ tumbled through the black lion’s jaw.

“He’s unconscious but still stable,” Ryan cut in smoothly.

James heard his own sigh of relief echoed from the Atlas. He imagined Veronica sitting back slightly in her seat.

“Well, we’ve reached the blue lion,” the older woman’s voice came over the comms again, this time much less frantic. “Allura was pretty lucky--she landed in a body of water that absorbed most of the impact.”

Coran let out a choked noise, and then there was a panicked flurry of sound on the other end of the comm. James tried not to let it worsen his own panic as his hands slipped through something wet as he tried to climb toward the black lion’s cockpit.

“Oh, shit,” he heard Veronica curse quietly.

“The blue lion is taking in water,” Shirogane’s voice came through, unwavering. He was every inch the leader, even as they were literally on a search and rescue for his comrades.

“The Atlas will be able to pull the whole lion out of the water, Captain,” Dr. Holt said.

“Allura will drown by then!” Veronica retorted, starting to sound a bit hysteric.

James closed his eyes briefly, then told himself he had to have faith in his teammates to get the other paladins to safety, and in the Atlas and its crew to save the alien princess. Now, his goal was to yank his stubborn childhood rival out of his alien cat warship and get him some medical attention.

Again, James caught himself after slipping on something slick underfoot. He increased the illumination from his helmet, hoping to see something other than the pitch black inside the cockpit, with none of the screens operational and the lion’s eyes dark and lifeless.

He looked at his hands first, trying to gather his bearings.

“Oh, _fuck_.”

He was slipping around in blood.

“Whoa, did James just _curse_?” Nadia said, obviously trying to go for levity but failing miserably and just sounding extremely concerned.

“Griffin?” Shirogane’s voice came through, still steady but obviously worried.

“I’m inside the black lion,” James said, rushing forward with urgency borne of pure fear. “I think I’m going to need a medical team, stat.”

“Keith?” Shirogane’s voice was breathless, like the name was involuntarily punched out of his lungs.

“Oh, come on Kogane,” James murmured as he finally made it into the mangled cockpit. “Just be your infuriating self and we can get you out of here.”

The red--no, black?--paladin was not in the pilot seat. James swallowed down the disbelieving laughter he felt at the back of his throat. Sure, Keith is in a cockpit that’s been crushed to the size of half of one of the MFE’s, and he isn’t even in the damn pilot seat.

“We’ve got her!” Veronica’s voice cried over the comm. “She’s okay, she’s breathing, _Dios_ , thank goodness…”

James swept over what he could see in the cramped cockpit. It looked like there was blood on every surface. Whatever relief he felt that the Atlas had successfully retrieved the princess and the blue lion was quickly washed out by the fact that he still hadn’t seen Keith and this space was essentially a--

“Dammit,” he said, rushing forward to where he could see Keith’s arm sticking out from beneath a part of the dashboard that had collapsed inward.

“This is the most I’ve heard James swear in--”

“Really not the time, Rizavi.”

“Griffin,” Ina’s voice called out. “You sound very distressed. The yellow paladin is now in the hospital wing. How can I be useful?”

Bless Liefsdottir.

“Lief, I… I really need a med team out here. And I need you to meet me ASAP.”

“Griffin?” the questioning inflection of Shirogane’s voice made James involuntarily tense as he tried to pull the pieces of the dashboards away from where they engulfed the rest of Keith’s body.

“I’m sorry sir,” he said, trying not to let his voice shake. “I have found the black paladin, and I’m not sure if he’s going to make it.”

The sound that tore itself from his mouth sounded dangerously, horrifically like a sob, and James immediately clenched his teeth to prevent any other sounds from escaping, but the comms had gone deathly silent.

“We are en route to your location,” Captain Shirogane said after the longest pause of James’ life. He could hardly think past the panicked litany of, ‘please don’t die please don’t die please don’t die’ in his brain as he desperately scrabbled at the hunks of metal pinning Keith to the floor of the cockpit. He could make out a part of the red helmet and Keith’s right arm up to his shoulder, but not much else.

“He’s got a pulse,” he announced, rocking back on his knees as he cupped his hands around Keith’s limp wrist.

Ina arrived within the next few minutes; fortunately, Garrett had crashed relatively close to where Keith managed to wreck himself. She was immediately calculating estimated blood loss and relaying whatever vital signs she could obtain over the comms, while James couldn’t do much other than try to remember to breathe as he examined the metal trapping Keith in this hellhole.

“We will probably lose his pulse in the next sixty to ninety seconds,” Ina reported, and her voice wobbled just enough to break the mechanical pattern of her speech. It startled James out of his haze.

“We’ll have to cut him out of the rest of it,” he said decisively.

“The lion is already considerably damaged--”

“Yeah, and he’ll die if we let him bleed out here. We can’t wait for the Atlas any longer.”

Ina managed to cut through the massive hunks of metal with some attachment she threw onto her plasma gun, and by the time they dragged Keith out from where the lion’s inner workings had engulfed him, he wasn’t breathing.

“Two minutes and forty-nine seconds have elapsed,” Ina said quietly, “I am not detecting a pulse.”

Keith’s chestplate was pretty much nonexistent at that point, and next thing James knew, he was counting out chest compressions while Ina delivered rescue breaths. He felt something inside his own chest jostling loose and crumbling with every compression.

Neither of them had any idea how long it took for the med team to arrive, followed by the Atlas. Someone attached an AED and took over compressions while James kept one finger on Keith’s femoral artery, feeling every compression ripple through Keith’s limp body.

“Clear!” someone barked, and James withdrew his hand for the first time since pulling Keith out of this mess.

“Don’t you dare die,” James growled desperately, blinking away the tears that had started streaming down his face unbeknownst to him.

Against all odds, they got him back. Keith’s pulse was thready and felt like it might peter out at any second, but James had his fingertip on Keith’s carotid throughout the entire trip back to the hospital wing of the Garrison base.

Earth’s only hope couldn’t die like this.

“So if he pulls through, are you gonna tell him about your big gay crush on him from when you were kids?” Nadia ribbed from his left, though her teasing was hardly convincing. She sounded more imploring, if anything.

James’ breath left him in an exasperated snort. The adrenaline crash after the last few hours was jarring; he suddenly found himself sitting in a hard plastic chair in the designated surgical waiting area, hands finally starting to shake.

“If he lives, I’ll tell him whatever he wants,” he said, voice rattling out from the recesses of his ribs. He ran an unsteady hand through his hair.

Keith was in the intensive care unit in critical condition for days. James watched perhaps the one person on the planet who was so opposed to authority that he had attempted to single-handedly take down a ten thousand-year-old Galra emperor suddenly reduced to helplessness. He lay still and lifeless while a machine breathed for him and medications kept him comatose so the pain didn’t drive him insane.

Eventually, Keith woke up; James hated himself for it, but he had always been a bit of a coward.

When he came by Keith’s room after Shirogane’s intergalactic pep talk, he wanted to slip in unnoticed. Of course, the room was already occupied by two tall, imposing figures and Keith’s cosmic wolf. The feminine-looking Blade of Marmora leader sat by Keith’s bedside, tenderly stroking his hair back from his face in a bizarrely affectionate way, which James struggled to reconcile with what he had always associated with a ruthless, bloodthirsty empire. The larger Galra was leaning against the windowsill with his arms crossed, watching James with narrowed golden eyes.

The cosmic wolf just sniffed the air curiously from where it was curled up in Keith’s lap, then seemed to be unbothered as it tucked its nose under Keith’s impossibly white fingers.

The paladin stirred, eyes fluttering open. He instinctively gave the wolf an affectionate pat, running his fingers lethargically into the fluffy dark fur behind the wolf’s ears. Those violet eyes slid first over to the Galra on his right, then to James, standing in the doorway to his left.

“James?” he said softly, voice rough from disuse. He tried to sit and narrowly avoided collapsing; the Galra at his bedside clicked her tongue and helped him settle back down into the bed. James watched the heart monitor pick up speed as Keith’s brows drew together in discomfort.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” James replied, matching the quiet tone of Keith’s voice. “I had heard you were awake, and just wanted to…”

He trailed off, not quite sure what he had wanted to do, after all. The Galras’ eyes narrowed at him, and he keenly felt their judgement; he was not welcome here.

“I’m just gonna--”

“Thank you.” Keith was looking straight at him, face unguarded in a way James had never seen it before. It made his tongue feel too thick and too heavy in his mouth as he stumbled over an appropriate answer.

“No problem,” he said, feeling woefully inadequate. Somehow, after being dragged from the clutches of death, Keith was still beautiful. The scar on his face, the lean cut to his cheekbones and the harsh lines of his body told the story of someone who had seen too much and survived on too little, but those otherworldly indigo eyes were still those of a dreamer (a child staring out the window, where _freedom_ whispered his name).

He turned to leave; there would always be another opportunity to talk about the things he felt, the things he had mistaken for hatred as a naive child, the things he wished he had realized earlier.

“Griffin, wait--”

He pretended he didn’t hear Keith asking him to stay, and simply continued to walk away. If his heart clenched on the way out, his steps didn’t falter.

\-----

Peace time was hard to adjust to, after living in on war ‘schedules’ for most of their formative years. James found it discomfiting, despite all the prayers he’d sent for peace, for the fighting to end.

The thing is, people think that when the war is over, everything becomes an idealistic utopia. James sighed--perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised that there was an uprising in political unrest, since what was essentially a private military corporation had taken over as a government body during wartime, and now no one was quite sure how leadership was supposed to resume. Crime rates skyrocketed since there was zero clarity on what constituted property and currency, and most people were left with nothing after the Galra occupation. Everyone was in crisis mode in trying to survive, made all the more difficult by people who were trying to get ahead in any way possible.  

Unfortunately, it also meant that the MFE pilots were essentially demoted to glorified hall monitors, trying to maintain order and minimize quarrels amongst the populace as the Earth attempted to rebuild itself. It certainly wasn’t what James envisioned himself doing a year after the war ended, but he was still truly grateful that the planet was no longer in mortal danger.

It’s just… kind of boring.

“You’re thinking about Kogane again, aren’t you?” Ryan, the traitor, muttered from behind him. James purposefully set his shoulders and took a deep breath.

“He’s off-planet, Ryan. He’s not coming back.”

“Wow, listen to this boy _pine_!” Nadia whooped from somewhere to his left, and James prayed for a swift death…

“I think your comments have made James uncomfortable,” Ina interrupted. Bless her soul.

“I am 97% sure it is because they are true.” Nope, fuck that, no one on this team was his ally.

James closed his eyes to gather his patience. “I am not thinking about Kogane. We have more than enough to deal with on our own planet, so let’s get to it.”

“Avoiding talking about him will not make you less uncomfortable,” Ina deadpanned.

“Yes it will, Ina!” he shouted. He absolutely did not walk off in a huff, and if Ryan said otherwise, he was a dirty, no-good liar.

“Something on your mind, Griffin?”

Of course James would manage to stomp right into Captain Shirogane, of all people.

“Nope, nothing at all, sir. I’m just on my way to, uh…”

A warm, flesh-and-bone hand came down on James’ shoulder.

“Listen,” the captain said gently, “I know you and Keith had… history. And it’s okay to miss him.”

James tried not to stiffen as obviously as he did under the otherwise comforting gesture.

“Sir, I’m not--it’s not--we don’t--” he stammered intelligently.

Shirogane smiled, and he seemed infinitely old and infinitely knowing in that moment.

“It’s okay to miss him. I do. Every day.”

James had a terrible poker face, and he blushed way too easily. Case in point--he could feel the colour rising to his face all the way up to the roots of his hair.

“He’s coming back this weekend,” Shirogane said airily, finally removing his hand on James’ shoulder. “I’m sure he’d love to see you.”

“I--uh, I mean, that’s great,” James replied, at a loss for what else he could say.

“You should talk to him.” The suggestion was heavy and meaningful; it hung over James’ head like a guillotine.

James bit the inside of his lip.

“Yes, sir.”

Shirogane chuckled. “At ease, Griffin. I’m sure you have much better things to do than gossip about your love life, am I right?”

James shuddered. Even his commanding officer wouldn’t cut him a break.

“Thank you, sir.”

Shirogane walked past James, who stood stock still in the middle of the hallway, wondering when his life had spiralled into a teenage drama.

“Think about it, Griffin.”

James closed his eyes. He really wished he could _stop_ thinking about it.

True to form, this meant that by the time Keith landed, James had actually thought of precious little other than how much he wanted to bury his hands in his long dark hair and crush their lips together.

“James?”

James fidgeted awkwardly under Keith’s scrutiny, his cosmic wolf at his side observing the exchange coolly.

“Hey.”

Keith smiled, and James felt like his heart was beating triple time.

“It’s good to see you.”

James accepted the hand that Keith offered.

“Same to you. You look… well.”

That stunning smile again. James’ heart couldn’t deal with much more of this.

“So… uh, if you’re not busy, do you maybe wanna grab coffee? With me?”

The cosmic wolf made a pleased little _whuffing_ sound, and James sincerely hoped he had not yet reached full tomato status.

Keith’s smile widened a touch, and James’ stomach fluttered. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“RYAN! YOU HAVE TO DO ALL MY AIR TRAFFIC DUTY FOR A MONTH!” James winced as he heard Nadia screeching across the landing bay.

“I hate my team so much,” he said sheepishly. Keith laughed and let his fingers circle around James’ wrist.

“Couldn’t have just waited another week?” Ryan grumbled as he shoved past them.

“Really, they suck,” James repeated, but his lips quirked up into an involuntary smile.

“I want you to know that I refused to participate in their bet,” Ina said evenly as she walked by.

“Thank you, Leif!”

Ina turned back for a moment. “I did not foresee that you would ever gather your courage to confess to and/or proposition Kogane, and therefore felt it would be a futile wager to make.”

She continued off to wherever she was going, and James felt thoroughly back-stabbed.

Keith slid two fingers under James’ chin to close his gaping mouth before leaning forward to brush his lips across James’.

The fighter pilot’s brain promptly short-circuited.

“I figure I owe you at least a coffee for saving my life a few times,” Keith whispered, eyelashes so close they were brushing against James’ temple.

James finally gave into his desire and tangled his fingers in Keith’s hair, tilting the other man’s head up and dragging him forward to close the space between them.


End file.
